CRK: I was born the year the Beatles invaded America, in a small town called Skerries, just north of Dublin, Ireland. I now live in a renovated overall factory in Birmingham, Alabama.

2. I'm assuming that writing to you was a hobby that got a little out of hand. Can you tell me how that happened? How and when did writing change from a hobby into a profession?

CRK: Writing was never a hobby for me. For me, at least, writing is such hard work I could never think of it as a hobby. A hobby is something you do because it’s an enjoyable way to pass free time, right? I started writing with the intent of becoming a published author in the summer of 1992, when I began a novel called The Five Of Cups. One day I said, “I’m going to write a novel,” and I spent the next nine months doing little else. I sold my first short story in July 1993 and from there it sort of becomes a blur.

3. In the past when you were writing stories, did you ever think you would end up writing comics? Did you ever aspire to become a comic book writer? How did you end up in the comic book industry and, more importantly, can you explain what you consider the main differences between your prose work and your comic book work?

CRK: I was honestly never much of a comic reader. But in the late eighties, a friend cajoled me into reading a whole bunch of stuff: V For Vendetta, Moonshadow, Ronin, The Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and The Sandman. Moonshadow and The Sandman impressed me greatly and I began to see how comics could mature as a medium, if the industry supported talented writers and artists. That was about ‘89, I guess. That’s when I began to take comics seriously and I really got hooked on The Sandman. But I never intended to write for comics. I set out to write novels and short stories. I met Neil Gaiman after he accepted a short story for the prose anthology, The Sandman: Book Of Dreams, and then he read the manuscript of my novel, Silk. So, he knew me as a prose writer when he recommended me to the original Dreaming editor, Alisa Kwitney, to write a story arc for The Dreaming. That was in May 1996. I was such a huge fan of The Sandman that I said yes without pausing to realize that I didn’t know how to write a comic script. Fortunately, Neil sent me a number of Sandman scripts to study. Anyway, obviously there are a lot of differences between writing for comics and writing prose. I don’t write prose from an outline, for example, and I have to do pretty detailed outlines for Vertigo. And, when I’m writing comics, so much of what I’m doing is essentially stage direction for the artist; 90 percent of a given script is instruction for the artist. And, whereas prose is a very private thing, other people have a say, to a degree, in what I do for The Dreaming and that takes a lot of getting used to.

4. Not too long ago, you made your — impressive — novel debut with Silk. To people who haven't read the book, can you explain in a nutshell what it is about?

CRK: No. I’ve tried and it always comes out sounding dumb. I hate synopses. It’s a contemporary Gothic novel set in Birmingham, Alabama. There are a lot of spiders in it. I’m afraid people ought to read Silk to find out what it’s about.

5. One of the things that struck me about the book is the fact that you frequently use sentences that are constructed in a manner similar to this: <emotion> AND <action> or <description> AND <action> Example: "The sun down an hour, first long hour of cold, and Keith Barry sat on one end of the old loading platform." or "The finality in Spider's voice, the mulish resolution and to her fleeting surprise, Robin had discovered that this time she didn't really care if it was because Spyder was sick . . .". This, something I find very characteristic for your writing, is an effective and direct way to convey the atmosphere of a situation first and then tell the reader what the characters do, given that atmosphere. It makes the book very pleasant to read as well. You also use this technique in The Dreaming from time to time, but obviously to a lesser extent. Did you consciously make this a part of your writing or is it just an instinctive way of getting the message across?

CRK: It isn’t at all instinctive. It’s very important to me how my prose sounds, that it reads well aloud. So every sentence has to be lyrical, has to fit into a rhythm scheme. No sentence should stand alone. This meant finding an unconventional voice, or style, and refining it until it suited my needs. I’m still refining it. For me, prose isn’t just about storytelling. It’s about how a story is told, the mechanics of language. I think storytelling is the easy part. Learning to tell a story artfully is a challenge. For me, artful storytelling should be pleasing to the ear and should challenge both the reader and the listener. I’ve had more than my share of critics who think this is all actually the result of sloppiness, that I sit down at the keyboard and spew forth whatever comes to mind and mail it off to an editor. I’ve seen my writing described as “garbled” or “incoherent” or “confusing.” I think that’s because there are an awful lot of readers who don’t know how to read, not past simple narrative, anyway. They want to be entertained and they want little else. They don’t want to think about what they’re reading. Silk took me three years to write because I spent so much time worrying over every sentence, every turn of phrase, every adjective.

6. The horror in Silk is used in a very subtle fashion. Do you even consider it horror? Or yourself a horror writer?

CRK: No, I don’t consider Silk a horror novel, nor do I think of myself as a horror writer. And the quickest way to explain what I mean is to paraphrase something Doug Winter has said again and again: horror is not a genre, it’s an emotion. Silk is intended, at times, to evoke horror in the reader, but, just as often, it’s meant to evoke a host of other reactions: wonder, awe, terror, despair, anger, delight, sadness, and so on. I didn’t sit down to write a novel which would exist for no other reason than to make someone experience the particular emotion called horror. I don’t think there are many writers who do.

7. The "screenplay" of Silk (or rather, the way you move from setting to setting and form scene to scene) is not very straightforward. Different characters are introduced seemingly randomly, but — of course — in the end all the story lines converge. Did you set up sort of a timeline for yourself when you were writing the book?

CRK: I didn’t sit down and write an outline of the narrative, but I was always very conscious of how all these events and people and words had to fit together, that there was a particular way I wanted them to fit together. So there really wasn’t a lot of randomness, but I’m glad that maybe there’s the illusion of randomness to the reader. You shouldn’t be able to see where everything’s headed until you get there. You should be left wondering, again and again, “What has this got to do with anything?” and “Now why did that happen?” On one level, Silk is intended as a narrative puzzle for readers to solve as they move through the story.

8. Let's talk about comics for a bit. You are now pretty much the regular writer of The Dreaming. Before you wrote the book, were you familiar with both the Sandman characters and the old House of Mystery characters? Was it difficult to handle characters that weren't a creation of your own?

CRK: Actually, it’s usually a lot of fun, getting to play with these people and places that someone else has created. I adore most of them, even Cain and Abel. The challenge is in keeping them true and letting them grow at the same time; that is, they should be the characters that they were in The Sandman, but they can’t be allowed to remain as they were there, because the story didn’t end with The Wake. The characters’ lives didn’t conclude with The Sandman #75. Once the editors at Vertigo decided that there would be a continuation of the story, that meant that the lives of the characters would also continue, and that meant things would change. And yes, because I was such a fan of The Sandman, I was very familiar with the characters before I started writing for The Dreaming.

9. Neil Gaiman has been mentioned as a consultant. I'm assuming that to different writers of "his" characters, his role can be a little different. What interaction do you have with him?

CRK: In my comics writing, Neil has been a wonderful mentor. He’s allowed me a lot of latitude in how I’ve chosen to interpret particular characters — Cain’s a good example — but there are times that he steers me in one direction or another, or says, “Mad Hettie wouldn’t say that just that way.” It amazes me that he’s so cool about someone else working with characters that he created. I’m such a control freak, I think it would drive me nuts. A lot of people want to know what it means that Neil is listed as “consultant.” On the one hand, it means he has script approval, that he reads each script for continuity, and so forth. And on the other, it means that he’s always back there behind me, not writing over my shoulder, but helping to keep me on track. And when you have to do a script every month, no matter how you feel or how many other things you have to write, it’s good to know there’s someone to help keep you from going off the deep end.

10. There is a news group about you on the internet, in which you yourself are playing an active part. Do you think it is important to be able to communicate with readers directly?

CRK: I don’t think it’s important, not in the sense that the readers would be missing out on something if I wasn’t active in the newsgroup, or the Vertigo boards, or at conventions, or giving interviews, or whatever. Certainly, my writing has to stand on its own, if for no other reason than the simple fact that the vast majority of my readers don’t follow Usenet or search out the interviews. Whenever an author gets involved with readers at that level, it’s just a little extra. And these days, it’s getting harder and harder for me to find time for those extras.

11. What can you tell us about projects that you will be working on in the near future, whether they be prose or comics?

CRK: I’m working on the next novel, called Trilobite. There’s The Dreaming, of course, and I’ve just finished a story for Vertigo’s Winter’s Edge III anthology. I’m working on a Sandman Presents story and Bernie Wrightson and I have been talking about doing something together. I’m also finishing up a short story collection called Tales Of Pain And Wonder, due out early next year from Gauntlet Publications.

12. And finally, something that I've wondered about for a while... what does the 'R' stand for?

CRK: It stands for Rebekah.